Columbus inches forward on plans for nonpolice response program, solicits proposals

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin hopes by the time the group returns from summer recess in September, it will be ready to pilot an emergency response program that doesn’t include police.

September will mark over a year and a half since Hardin first announced funding for a nonpolice response program pilot for “nonviolent, low-acuity” calls for service, including mental health crises. At the end of April, the city quietly released its request for proposal (RFP) for ideas from experts on how to spend that funding – and potentially scale up the pilot into a full service. 

Unlike the city’s existing alternative crisis response programs, which pair social workers and medical providers with officers or dispatchers, the new unit would be the city’s first public safety program without police. The program would mirror similar services in cities across the country, some of which have been operating for decades.

The Columbus Safety Collective has been in regular contact with city leaders about getting a nonpolice response program off the ground, said Steve David, an organizer with the collective. He said he didn’t know the RFP was available until being contacted by NBC4 – but the news was encouraging. 

At the same time, David said, the timeline has been frustrating for the collective and community members who have for years called on the city to invest in a nonpolice crisis intervention program.

“We continue to see names added to this list of people who have died during mental health crises or who have been harmed by police, while the city has not built the nonpolice response unit that they need,” David said.

The collective will not be submitting its own proposal, David said, but it has worked closely with organizations that put together nonpolice response programs in other cities. Both David and Hardin pointed to the Mediation Response Unit in Dayton, which formed after community discussions about police reform in 2020, as an example of a program to emulate.

Hardin has been outspoken about his support for such a program. When announcing the pilot program funding in February 2023, he said the city was “too reliant” on police officers to meet all of its needs. He echoed his earlier sentiments on Thursday.

“For far too long, we’ve been asking our police to solve every issue, from mental health to homelessness to disputes between neighbors, and we know that to keep us safe, we need to make sure folks are getting the right response at the right time,” Hardin said.

He acknowledged that it has taken a long time – about four years since public discussions began – for the city council to prepare to solicit and evaluate pilot proposals. In an interview, he said the city didn’t want to rush to launch a program without taking the time to determine the scope and rollout of a project that would meet the community’s unique needs.

“I know this is not moving as fast as folks had wanted, but we believe this is the right way to get a good product moving forward that keeps everybody safe,” Hardin said.

Safety is also top-of-mind for Columbus police, said Brian Steel, president of the local police union. He said the union supports exploring nonpolice response pathways – as long as responders can be kept safe, and funding isn’t diverted from the police budget.

“Our biggest fear is if somebody’s in mental crisis and is homicidal, suicidal, and we send a social worker, our fear is there is going to be a dead social worker,” Steel said.

Safety is a topic that came up when Columbus Safety Collective members visited Dayton last week to see the Mediation Response Unit in action, David said. In Dayton, if low-level disputes or incidents arise that can’t be resolved over the phone, a two-person team trained in crisis intervention and de-escalation responds and mediates or provides links to resources, should people request them.

The unit has become an integral part of crisis response in Dayton, and David said they regularly respond to crises that historically have been reserved for armed law enforcement.

“They talk about this all the time, that originally the police said, ‘You can’t go out to those calls,’ or ‘We’re going to have to go and save you,’ and now the police are calling them for their services,” David said.

City council had initially set aside $1.2 million for the pilot. Hardin said the $1.2 million isn’t a budget limit but was rather a starting point – proposers will be pitching their own budgets.

In addition to pitching a nonpolice pilot program, proposers are asked to evaluate the city’s existing alternative crisis response programs. Proposers will also recommend the most effective way to establish a temporary community advisory board to oversee and evaluate the city’s network of alternative crisis response units.

Community involvement from the start is crucial to any program’s success, David said, and he added that he hopes the advisory board becomes a permanent fixture in the city’s public safety system. To David and the collective, community involvement also means recruiting residents – many of whom have been deescalating situations and responding to crises in their neighborhoods for years – to serve on nonpolice response teams.

“This is an opportunity for the city to invest in the cultural expertise that exists in our neighborhoods, build on programs that have been proven elsewhere, and do what the people of our city have been asking for,” David said.

Proposals are due June 12 and can be submitted through the city’s procurement portal. Per the timeline outlined in the RFP, a top proposal will be selected by the end of June. Hardin said he hopes city council can vote on a proposal by the end of July.

Read the RFP below.